Storied dining guide Zagat sold to Infatuation in dining-guide super-merger

A Zagat book sits on a bookshelf at a store in Miami. When Google bought Zagat in 2011, the idea was that Google could bring the company — which at the time was more than three decades old and famous for its red restaurant guide books — into the modern digital era. less

A Zagat book sits on a bookshelf at a store in Miami. When Google bought Zagat in 2011, the idea was that Google could bring the company — which at the time was more than three decades old and famous for its ... more

Photo: Joe Raedle, Getty

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Octopus with Fingerling Potatoes at Barvale in San Francisco, Calif. is seen on January 20th, 2018. Barvale is currently one of the top Zagat recommended restaurants in San Francisco.

Octopus with Fingerling Potatoes at Barvale in San Francisco, Calif. is seen on January 20th, 2018. Barvale is currently one of the top Zagat recommended restaurants in San Francisco.

Photo: John Storey, Special To The Chronicle

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Andrew Steinthal and Chris Stang attend Casper Presents Breakfast In Bed Fest With The Infatuation at Haven's Kitchen on April 14, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images for Casper)

Andrew Steinthal and Chris Stang attend Casper Presents Breakfast In Bed Fest With The Infatuation at Haven's Kitchen on April 14, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images for Casper)

Photo: Chance Yeh, Getty Images For Casper

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Bartender Jessica Everett explains tapas at Barvale in San Francisco, Calif. on January 20th, 2018. Barvale is currently one of the top Zagat recommended restaurants in San Francisco.

Bartender Jessica Everett explains tapas at Barvale in San Francisco, Calif. on January 20th, 2018. Barvale is currently one of the top Zagat recommended restaurants in San Francisco.

Photo: John Storey, Special To The Chronicle

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Zagat guides in printed book form have been a popular guide for dining and entertain
ment over the decades.

Zagat guides in printed book form have been a popular guide for dining and entertain
ment over the decades.

Photo: MICHAEL FALCO, NYT

Storied dining guide Zagat sold to Infatuation in dining-guide super-merger

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Google has sold the restaurant-review company Zagat to the Infatuation, an online restaurant review site.

The purchase price was not disclosed. The move comes nearly seven years after Google acquired Zagat for $151 million.

The Infatuation, which is based in New York City, said in a statement that it hopes to “create the largest, most influential, and most useful restaurant discovery platform in the world.” The two brands will remain separate, with the Infatuation maintaining its core of expert reviews and guides, while Zagat will focus on user surveys and crowdsourced content.

Founded by Tim and Nina Zagat as a survey of their friends’ opinions on New York City eateries, Zagat and its quotation-mark-laden reviews — appearing in the company’s distinctive burgundy-colored dining guidebooks — once made the publisher synonymous with searches for restaurants.

In 2011, Google bought the company — under the direction of Marissa Mayer, who went on to become Yahoo’s chief executive — to integrate it into its mapping service. The idea was that Google could bring the company — which at the time was more than three decades old — into the modern digital era, and use it to enhance Google’s local offerings.

Since then, however, some observers have criticized Google’s handling of Zagat. For the first several years of the partnership, changes to Zagat and its app were minimal, as Google tried to incorporate the restaurant information into its ill-fated Google+ Local efforts, once meant to rival Facebook. The company overhauled the Zagat website and the outdated smartphone app in 2016, but in recent years, Google has emphasized its own user reviews in searches, not Zagat reviews.

“Zagat has helped us provide useful and relevant dining results for users across our various products,” Jen Fitzpatrick, a vice president of product and engineering at Google, said in a statement. “The Infatuation is an innovative company that will be a terrific home for the Zagat brand.”

The Infatuation was founded in 2009 as a restaurant and bar recommendation site by onetime music executives Chris Stang and Andrew Steinthal. It has an estimated audience of 3 million people per month and has gained particular traction among Millennials in its New York hometown, in large part due to efforts such as the popular #EEEEEATS branded hashtag on Instagram. It is currently active in 18 cities around the world, including San Francisco, Chicago, Tokyo, Sydney, Mexico City and Rome.

The company said it became profitable last year. It plans to keep Zagat as a separate brand, using it as a user-generated-content counterpart to the Infatuation. One possibility is integrating Zagat’s content into other products and platforms.

“We’re just trying to build something that takes this powerful brand and continues to grow it,” Stang said.